Moore's Demise Forever Puzzling

JEFF JACOBS

October 18, 2002|By JEFF JACOBS; Courant Columnist

Mike Port sat there fidgeting on the broadcast level at Anaheim Stadium, only a few feet from Red Sox announcer Ken Coleman. Donnie Moore was on the mound to close the deal and owner Gene Autry was riding the elevator down to join the celebration in the locker room.

Even with the Red Sox down to their last strike, Port didn't move from his seat late that Sunday afternoon in autumn 1986. Maybe he knew baseball too well. Maybe he didn't want to appear presumptuous. Maybe he was being superstitious. Sixteen years later, Port concludes, the reason was probably all of the above.

``Well, appreciating the building I'm sitting in at this moment,'' the interim Red Sox general manager said this week from Fenway Park, ``the Angels should have won that series.''

The general instructions from manager Gene Mauch seemed simple enough. If the Red Sox pinch hit Henderson, go after him with hard stuff. He has slider bat speed. ``Don't give him anything where he can quicken his bat,'' Port remembered.

When the count advanced to 2-and-2, however, the mind games started. Overpower him? Or is Henderson guessing fastball? Should we fool him with something off-speed?

``The thing is you also tell your pitchers to go with their best stuff and Donnie had a good forkball,'' Port said, ``so you can't put all the blame on Donnie.''

Henderson drove a two-run homer into the left field stands, into Red Sox lore and, if you ever see the replay of that home run, look for Mauch in the Angels dugout. His eyes are the ones shooting daggers toward the mound.

``But even after that home run, my memory tells me we had five other opportunities to win that game,'' Port said. ``We lost in 11 innings and then lost the last two games in Boston. Donnie did so much for us in 1986. We should have done more for him that day.''

Port, of course, is only one piece in the dark, complex jigsaw puzzle that was Donnie Moore's life. Sixteen years later, many of the pieces still do not fit and never will fit.

The short and easy answer is the Angels were one pitch away from the 1986 World Series, Moore gave up a home run, gave up on life and put a bullet in his head three years later.

The second short and easy answer is the home run had nothing to do with Moore killing himself and nearly killing his wife.

Port ran the Angels in 1986 and, for the moment at least, runs the team that erased a 3-1 ALCS lead and a 5-2 Game 5 ninth-inning lead to beat the Angels in seven games. He feels too much has been made of that home run, yet he also knows the trail of this tragedy is long and deep and the disjointed pieces of Donnie Moore can be found all over the archives of American journalism.

In 1989, Dave Pinter, Moore's agent, told the Los Angeles Times, ``Ever since he gave up the home run to Dave Henderson, he was never himself again. He constantly talked about the Henderson home run. He couldn't get over it. I tried to get him to go to a psychiatrist, but he said, `I don't need it. I'll get over it.' ... That home run killed him.''

Yet in a recent Newark Star-Ledger piece, Randall Johnson, Moore's former attorney and longtime friend, said: ``If you were really still troubled about one pitch, if that's really what was haunting you, why would you shoot your wife? Because it didn't have anything to do with that pitch.''

The Angels' success of 2002 has dispelled the ridiculous notion that the Angels or any other professional sports franchise is cursed. The Angels have advanced to the World Series for the first time in their 41-year history on merit.

The scoreboard in 2002 tells us the Angels are in the World Series, but no scoreboard can tell us what was in Moore's mind. He was booed every time he took the mound in Anaheim the next season. He had a string of injuries, was ineffective and released by Port in 1988. Moore's comeback with Kansas City's Triple A team in Omaha ended when he was released June 12, 1989. Thirty-six days later, he was dead at 35.

Demetria Moore, Donnie's only daughter among three children, recently told the Orange County Register she believes that pitch ruined his life, tore apart their family and took away her father. Yet Reggie Jackson, Moore's teammate in 1986, was quoted this month in the Boston Globe saying, ``It's become a great sports story that people tell: Donnie Moore killed himself because of one pitch to Dave Henderson. I don't believe it for a moment. I never heard him talk about Dave Henderson.''

Jackson said the night before Moore killed himself, desperate for money, he asked Jackson for far more than $10,000.

Yet contrast Jackson's words to the statement of another teammate, Brian Downing, angered by the treatment Moore received from the fans and media. ``You destroyed a man's life over one pitch,'' Downing told the Los Angeles Times in 1989. ``You buried him. He was a very sensitive guy.''